


and so he goes

by laure_lie (justawks)



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types
Genre: (but like barely), :(, Academia, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Avenger Bros are gr8 Bros, Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Compliant, Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Spoilers, College Student Steve, Happy Ending, Hopeful Ending, I just made up how academia works, I'm an undergrad student I know nothing, Lonely Steve Rogers, M/M, Post-Captain America: Civil War (Movie), Post-Serum Steve Rogers, Professor Steve Rogers, Steve Rogers Feels, Steve Rogers-centric, Steve leaves the Avengers, Student Steve Rogers, for Academia !!!, sad Steve
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-29
Updated: 2016-09-29
Packaged: 2018-08-18 12:03:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8161477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/justawks/pseuds/laure_lie
Summary: One suffers and the other sleeps.Alternatively, Steve goes to college.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I was inspired to write this after reading the following line from Book 4 of The Aeneid: 
> 
> "All I ask is time, blank time: some rest from frenzy, breathing room till my fate can teach my beaten spirit how to grieve." 
> 
> This line is said by Queen Dido of Carthage after she learns that her second husband Aeneas is leaving her to continue on his quest for Italy. 
> 
> It seems to me to be a very Steve thing to say. I pictured him paraphrasing this when explaining to the Avengers (which inexplicably reformed post-Civil War) why he needed to leave. Then I got excited about Steve being knowledgable!steve about books n history. Then I saw in my mind an image professor!steve teaching at a tiny liberal arts college with lots of excited kiddos who aren't really sure if it's /really/ him. 
> 
> The rest is, as one says, history.
> 
> I took me about an hour to write this, and I haven't edited it at all, but I plan to come back (eventually) and fix it up. If you see any mistakes, let me know!

It’s late August when he tells them. The sun hangs low and heavy in the sky every night, and the clouds look streaked with blood. The air is stifling, and the grass, however little there is, is brittle. 

“I can’t do this anymore,” is that he says. _I’m exhausted_ , is what he means. Some days the guilt threatens to choke him, bubbles up in his throat and leaves his gasping for air in some dark corner of his solitary apartment. 

They worry about him, he knows, but there is an inexplicable dread which fills him every time he picks up that shield. He’d meant to be done with it, he really had. But. 

(He doesn’t want to acknowledge it, but he’s been lost ever since he watched the doors of that frozen chamber slide shut. He is a vessel unmoored. He is drifting.)

“I love you all,” is what he says. _I love you all_ , is what he means. But this tower can no longer contain his sadness. He needs somewhere else to grieve. 

And so he goes.

***

He goes back to school, because he’s always dreamed of academia and he hasn’t been in this meat suit long enough for his dreams of old to have left him yet. He looks around DC and New York because he knows them, as well as he can know any place in the 21th century, and because he doesn’t want to be too hard to find if his friends really, truly need him. He meant it when he said he was leaving, but he also meant it when he said he loved them.

(It feels weird, admitting he feels any sort of love for so many people. For so much of his life he’s loved only two people. For a time it seemed two was all he’d get. But here he is now, with Sam and Tony and Wanda and Natasha and they’re not just workmates to him, not just casual friends or running buddies and partners in co-misery. No, they’re family. And he’s left them in a way, yes, but he hasn’t truly left them. _Not like he’d left Bucky_ , his traitorous mind supplies. He still hasn’t figured how to tune out those thoughts.)

And so he goes to school. He picks Georgetown because they let him in and the class selections are good and the campus is near his favorite bagel place in DC. He sits in the back corner of lectures with people 6 or 7 decades his junior and he takes careful notes by hand because he still hasn’t mastered typing quickly enough for it to be effective. He writes his papers and does his projects and spends his time quietly avoiding the eyes of everyone else. He wears large sweatshirts and loose jeans to hide his frame. It’s a futile effort and he knows, but it feels proactive to be doing something, anything. Some of them have no idea who he is, he can tell. He breathes easier around them, those people whose faces don’t shine with misplaced admiration. Most of them, though...most of them know. 

Four years later and he is the proud owner of a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree and an empty feeling in his chest. 

But then Tony is calling him and mentioning that Columbia has a great Masters program, really, and they’re known for taking on students that are a little older, really, so it might be a good fit. He admits to himself that he’s missed New York, missed his friends, missed the way the city is a constant hum of activity. Missed the way it quieted his mind.

And so he goes. 

***

This time he gets a Masters in English Literature. He’s always liked stories, and it feels nice to immerse himself is the horrors of someone else’s life. 

He reads the words of survivors of the Holocaust, and remembers the looks on the faces of soldiers he knew that had liberated concentration camps. He reads their words over and over until he can recite them from memory, and then he reads them some more. 

This all must be worth it, he thinks. This life, I must have done something. And isn’t that just what he wanted when he enlisted, to do good, to be a part of something bigger? He is not so sure himself from the past understood what those things meant until it was too late. 

He studies and he writes and he reads until he can do no more. He is hungry for knowledge now, in the same way he used to hunger for the suffering of those who had done such wrong towards him. (In the same way he hungers for those familiar arms to wrap around him once again. It had been 80 years, in all honestly, since the last time he felt those arms wrapped fully around his frame, big or small. He aches for them.)

This time it is Natasha, who suggests it. Massachusetts is lovely, she says. It will be something new, something different. 

(Before everything, Bucky had wanted to go to Harvard. He’d never said anything, but Steve has found a pamphlet hidden in a drawer in Bucky’s desk. He’d found it after Bucky shipped out, and he never remembered to ask him about it once they were reunited. Then it was too late.)

And so he goes. 

***

He gets his PhD, but Massachusetts is not for him. He needs somewhere smaller. It’s not something he ever thought he’d want, but now he craves the quiet and slowness of life in a small town. There is so much in his mind, he can only take so much. 

Millerton University is a small private university tucked away in a small town in Northern Oregon. The trees are lush and green, and on clear days Mt. Hood peaks through the clouds. It is perfect in a way which might have been unsettling had he not been so _tired_. 

He teaches. He never thought he’d enjoy teaching, when he was younger he could barely hold anyone’s attention, and then as he grew older and larger he did his best to avoid positions of command. But his classes are small and his students are lovely and he gets to discuss his passions with like-minded people, never mind that he has existed for over a century and they have yet to break two decades. They are young enough that they hold no reverence for him. Most believe the name is a coincidence. He gives them no reason to think otherwise. 

It has been 14 years since he last spoke to James Buchanan Barnes by any name. To him, in his life which seems more and more to stretch out impossibly long, it feels at once like 200 hundred years and a mere few months. 

He has a meeting with a student in twenty minutes. She has questions about a paper, and about a boy, but he doubts she’ll ask those.

And so he goes. 

***

The sound the phone makes is canny, metallic. It feels familiar and foreign all at once, which unsettles him. It rings four times, one after another, before there is a click and a quiet, warm voice at the other end. 

“Tony?”

“No, uh, actually. It’s me.” There is a pause. “Bucky, in case that wasn’t-”

“Bucky? Oh my god, are you...are you alright? What happened? No one told me you were coming out or I would’ve been there Buck, you know I-”

“Hey, hey, it’s alright Stevie. I know you woulda been there if you’d known.”

(He stops to smile. He’s been doing that a lot in the past 72 hours since the doors to that dreaded chamber opened for what was (hopefully) the last time. There had been lots of tests, and lots of words in lots of languages. There had been shocks of pain and warm food and bottles and bottles of water. Vials and vials of blood. But he is empty, in the best possible way, and he is ready to start anew.)

“Long time no see, huh?” is what he says. _I love you_ , is what he means.

“Bucky…” Steve whispers softly, and his voice breaks on the word, the name. It has been a long time, in more ways that one.

“I’m free,” Bucky says next. “I’m clear, they fixed me, I’m free to go.”

There is silence, a pause. 

Then: “Hey, Buck,” Steve’s voice is soft and tinny over the phone. “You given any thought to what you’re gonna do now?”

Bucky pauses for a moment, closes his eyes. It makes it easier. “I was thinking of moving, trying someplace new.”

“Ever been to Oregon?” is Steve’s next, immediate question.

“I can’t say that I have.” He’s smiling over the phone, and he’s sure Steve can tell.

“I, well, I have…” Steve trails off. “I have a pretty big apartment here, and I know it’s not ideal, but it might be a good place for you to-”

“Steve, do you have a suggestion or are you gonna just talk at me?”

He can hear him take a deep breath through the phone. “Um...do you wanna move into my place, Buck?” Steve asks.

And so he goes.


End file.
